Artefacts of Encounter: Cook's Voyages, Colonial Collecting and Museum Histories

Artefacts of Encounter: Cook's Voyages, Colonial Collecting and Museum Histories, edited by Nicholas Thomas, Julie Adams, Billie Lythberg, Maia Nuku, and Amiria Salmond. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2016. ISBN 978-О-8248-5935-О, 348 pages, illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. Cloth, US$68.00.

Artefacts of Encounter: Cook's Voyages, Colonial Collecting and Museum Histories is a striking collection of photographs and essays about the Early Pacific collection at the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology at the University of Cambridge (mAA). With its large format and glossy images, this volume may seem like a coffee-table book. However, the essays and extensive catalog within make this project a valuable resource for any scholar studying the material cultures of Oceania, histories of collecting and museum display, and colonial contact zones.

The editors form a powerhouse of scholars and curators: Nicholas Thomas, mAA director, well-known scholar of Oceanic history, and author of numerous books including Colonialism's Culture (Princeton University Press, 1994) and Entangled Objects (Harvard University Press, 1991); Julie Adams, curator of Oceania at the British Museum; Billie Lythberg, an Auckland-based art historian; Maia Nuku, associate curator for Oceanic art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art; and Amiria Salmond, former mAA curator and author of Museums, Anthropology and Imperial Exchange (Cambridge University Press, 2005). Together, this group of curators, anthropologists, and art historians has compiled an exciting and refreshing look at objects from the Cambridge collection, which, with over two hundred objects, is one of the most important collections of Captain James Cook's voyage artifacts worldwide.

The book is divided into five parts, beginning with part 1, "Encountering Artefacts." This section includes an introduction by Thomas and Adams and three essays by...